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Language Savants

 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots Post Reply
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garfield
Newbie
Germany
Joined 6179 days ago
18 posts - 18 votes
Speaks: German*

 
 Message 25 of 33
24 November 2011 at 7:09pm | IP Logged 
Josh Cohen wrote:
The technique is the same in real life and the competitions.


My point was that competitors who have bad results in N&F when they start won't become
good enough to finish first at a World Championchip in that particular discipline even
when they use techniques + lots of practice. On average. Based on my observations as a
(not so good) competitor ;).
And Corney/Tammet finished 4. in '99 (when he was bad overall) and 1. in '00 with just
a minimal improvement (when he was runner up).

He never had issues with recognizing faces in my opinion.

I'm sorry if I don't make much sense, English is not my native language obviously :).




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Josh Cohen
Newbie
United States
mnemotechnics.org/
Joined 4876 days ago
35 posts - 63 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Portuguese, Esperanto

 
 Message 26 of 33
24 November 2011 at 9:58pm | IP Logged 
garfield wrote:
My point was that competitors who have bad results in N&F when they start won't become good enough to finish first at a World Championchip in that particular discipline even when they use techniques + lots of practice. On average. Based on my observations as a (not so good) competitor ;).


Ah -- sorry, I misunderstood. Maybe see you at some of the 2012 competitions. :)

Edited by Josh Cohen on 24 November 2011 at 9:59pm
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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6439 days ago
4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 27 of 33
25 November 2011 at 12:30am | IP Logged 
Josh Cohen wrote:
Volte wrote:
Taken as a whole, the specificity that we see in tests of Tammet's abilities, the fact that it coheres with known neuroscientific findings, and that multiple labs, have independently verified Tammet's synesthesia (our lab and the Baron-Cohen lab) all argues against the idea that his synesthesia is a fake. . . . The commentary on the talk page also strongly suggests that "Moonwalking with Einstein" is a poor source on the topic - I haven't seen it, so can't say.


Please read this entire thread carefully. Every point is addressed.

Wikipedia is not a credible source of information, especially when controversies are involved. It can be edited by anyone, even if they don't know much about the subject. The value of Wikipedia is that it often links to credible external sources.

Volte wrote:
The 'faces and names' memory event seems to involve fairly different skills than doing well with faces in the real world.


garfield wrote:
The 'Names & Faces' discipline profits the least from memory techniques. You won't get to the top unless you were reasonably good at it to begin with.


The technique is the same in real life and the competitions. A list of the most common techniques is here.

If you want to see how powerful the techniques are for yourself, here is a tutorial that will take about 30 minutes to learn, and will allow you to memorize 60 random binary digits (or card colors) by only looking at each digit once. My example is a very basic technique. If you learn more complicated mnemonic systems, you can do much more. Every test they put him through can also be passed with mnemonic techniques.

Volte wrote:
Being a savant and using memory tricks aren't mutually exclusive.


True -- but everything can be explained by memory techniques in this case. There were serious flaws in the research:

      "The authors state he hasn't had memory training - presenting no evidence. Ironically, they unknowingly cite a paper which studied several memorisers - including Tammet - which stated that all of the subjects had studied memory techniques. . ."


I'm not debating that Tammet has and uses memory training; the evidence for that is rather impossible to find unconvincing.

I'm simply saying that it appears that he also has synaesthesia. I am fully aware that wikipedia can be edited by anyone. However, signed comments on a talk page, by an established user who is either who he claims to be or has put a lot of effort into faking it, strike me about as useful as a typical web page: not infalliable, but useful.

The talk page has been decimated since yesterday. In this older revisions, there's the following:

Edhubbard wrote:

Second, the rarity of this form of synesthesia is attested both by my own extensive research into synesthesia (see my peer-reviewed publications here: [10]), and by the absence of this type of synesthesia in the reported forms cataloged by Sean Day [11], a synesthete and synesthesia researcher. As can be seen, "grapheme-color", in which letters and numbers elicit colors, is quite common, but having numbers elicit 3-D objects with size, shape, and texture has not been reported by any other synesthetes. Hence, it must be rare. Tammet is probably not entirely unique, but there are no other reported cases of this type of synesthesia. We can explain how such a form of synesthesia might arise by looking at the functional subdivisions in the parietal lobe, in particular the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). It is well-established that the mid-portion of the IPS is involved in numerical processing (see numerical cognition and the bio pages of two important researchers in this area Stanislas Dehaene and Brian Butterworth), and injuries to this region lead to deficits in calculation (see acalculia and dyscalculia). We also know that regions in posterior portion of the IPS are involved in complex 3-D shape and texture analysis, both in macaque monkeys [12] and in humans [13], in the service of being able to make the appropriate hand shapes to grasp objects (see Two Streams hypothesis#Dorsal_stream). If there were increased cross-talk between numerical regions in the mid-IPS and these 3-D shape and texture regions in the posterior-IPS (perhaps as a consequence of his childhood epilepsy), then Tammet would automatically, involuntarily experience 3-D shapes and textures every time he thinks about numbers, just as he reports. We suggested this mechanism when Tammet visited our lab, and it is illustrated in cartoon form in the BrainMan video. Although it is conceivable that Tammet himself has a detailed enough knowledge of neuroanatomy and neurophysiology to confabulate a unique form of synesthesia that is also consistent with the known neurofunctional properties of the brain, it seems highly unlikely, and thus suggests that these are accurate reports.


I'm not claiming he's a savant. I'm agreeing with you that he uses memory tricks. But it seems likely that he actually does have an unusual form of synaesthesia.

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Josh Cohen
Newbie
United States
mnemotechnics.org/
Joined 4876 days ago
35 posts - 63 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Portuguese, Esperanto

 
 Message 28 of 33
25 November 2011 at 1:38am | IP Logged 
Volte wrote:
The talk page has been decimated since yesterday. In this older revisions, there's the following:


Systematic whitewashing. Try adding any information to that Wikipedia page and see what happens. Wikipedia is useful for some topics, but not for anything controversial.

Edhubbard wrote:
Although it is conceivable that Tammet himself has a detailed enough knowledge of neuroanatomy and neurophysiology to confabulate a unique form of synesthesia that is also consistent with the known neurofunctional properties of the brain, it seems highly unlikely, and thus suggests that these are accurate reports.


Most of his comment doesn't address the original point: the tests they gave him can be passed with memory techniques, and it's already confirmed that he was (secretly) one of the world's best mnemonists.

The researcher's final statement was, "it seems highly unlikely", which is not scientific. Give any mnemonist of similar ability the same tests for synesthesia and I think they would pass.

It's actually very possible that Tammet does have a good understanding of synesthesia and neuroscience. Reading Mind of a Mnemonist will spark an interest in those subjects.

Volte wrote:
I'm not claiming he's a savant. I'm agreeing with you that he uses memory tricks. But it seems likely that he actually does have an unusual form of synaesthesia.


Maybe he has some kind of synesthesia, but the brain scans apparently didn't show any evidence of it. I haven't seen any credible evidence that can't be explained away by mnemonic techniques.

Ed Hubbard should run another mnemonist through the synesthesia tests and then he will see... :)
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Splog
Diglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
anthonylauder.c
Joined 5669 days ago
1062 posts - 3263 votes 
Speaks: English*, Czech
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 29 of 33
25 November 2011 at 9:04am | IP Logged 
Volte wrote:

I'm not claiming he's a savant. I'm agreeing with you that he uses memory tricks. But it
seems likely that he actually does have an unusual form of synaesthesia.


Yes. It is a form that only works consistently with numbers up to (I believe) 10,000. That
is, whenever given a number of up to four digits, it works consistently. Beyond that, and
it does not work at all. Some cynics would say that he has had several years now to create
a list of 10,000 number and colour/shape combinations, with which he can pass the lab
tests with flying colours. Thankfully, only cynics would test him with a large number, and
be surprised that he becomes flustered.
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Josh Cohen
Newbie
United States
mnemotechnics.org/
Joined 4876 days ago
35 posts - 63 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Portuguese, Esperanto

 
 Message 30 of 33
25 November 2011 at 7:43pm | IP Logged 
Splog wrote:
Yes. It is a form that only works consistently with numbers up to (I believe) 10,000. That is, whenever given a number of up to four digits, it works consistently. Beyond that, and it does not work at all. Some cynics would say that he has had several years now to create a list of 10,000 number and colour/shape combinations, with which he can pass the lab tests with flying colours.


Coincidentally, 10,000 images is exactly the number of compound images one would have when using one of the most popular memory systems.

It's called a person-action (PA) system. Every two digits is turned into a person and at action.

11 = Andre Agassi | playing tennis
15 = Albert Einstein | writing on blackboard

You chunk the digits in fours, and the first two digits become a person; the second two, an action:

1115 = Andre Agassi writing on blackboard
1511 = Albert Einstein playing tennis

Other mnemonists just use two objets/people in similar systems.

My 2-digit system is made up of objects and people without the actions:

3471 is an emerald and a bottle of vinegar, arranged left-to-right or top-to-bottom. If I want people to think it's synesthesia, I can take the attributes that come to mind first: deep green, angular yet watery, sparkling light. If someone asks me to make a clay figure of 3471, I can make a shape based on my images and then further attach the clay shape/colors to the images for 3471.

Anyone could create a 10,000 image system with 1-week of work, if they aren't too picky about the images they use.

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garfield
Newbie
Germany
Joined 6179 days ago
18 posts - 18 votes
Speaks: German*

 
 Message 31 of 33
26 November 2011 at 2:49am | IP Logged 
I use a simple system with persons and objects. 10k images total, some are nasty, some
beautiful, sounds familiar? nah...

But, since this is a language forum, we should maybe focus on how he learned his
languages. Is there any video/interview out there that shows him speaking all these
languages? All I have seen is a list on wikipedia and a few minutes of German and
Islandic.
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zhanglong
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4929 days ago
322 posts - 427 votes 
Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese

 
 Message 32 of 33
26 December 2011 at 3:42am | IP Logged 
The memory techniques are fascinating. Tammet inspired my One Week Challenge to learn Russian to A2 level in one week. Of course, I devoted myself to the task only a little at a time with the majority of my time working, but I still wonder how much is possible to learn in a focused, intense period.

While I do wonder how much Icelandic Tammet was able to learn in a short time, the issue of whether or not he is a savant is irrelevant.

What I most would like to know is how to apply mnemonics to remember and recall language at will.



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